Form questions
Graduate survey questions for six months after finishing
Twenty questions is the full instrument and eleven is what graduates actually finish six months after leaving. Three are essential: what the person is doing now, how closely it relates to what they studied, and whether they would recommend the programme to someone in their position a year ago. Together those three are the outcome and the verdict.
A graduate survey has one job, which is finding out what people are doing now and whether the qualification had anything to do with it. Everything else, the salary question included, is optional and should be written as though it is.
The questions
Your qualification
Which programme did you complete?DropdownRequired
Which cohort or intake were you in?DropdownRequired
Cohorts are the comparison unit. Without it a rising trend and a good intake look identical.
Did you complete the whole qualification?Single choice
Some graduate surveys reach people who left early, and their answers are the useful ones.
Were you working in this field before you started?Single choice
The single most important control question, and the one most often left out.
What you are doing now
What best describes your main activity now?Single choiceRequired
Full time work, part time, self employed, further study, looking for work, not currently looking.
How closely does that work relate to what you studied?Single choice
Directly related, somewhat, not related, not applicable. Employment and employment in the field are different outcomes.
How long after finishing did you start it?Single choice
Already had it, within a month, one to three, three to six, not yet.
How did you find the role?Single choice
Include a contact made during the programme option, which is an outcome the provider produced.
Is the role at the level you expected?Single choice
Below, at, above. Under employment is invisible in a simple employment rate.
How many hours a week do you work?Single choice
Bands. It separates genuine part time choice from involuntary part time work.
If you are still looking, what is making it hard?Multiple choice
Experience asked for, location, visa or residency, confidence, nothing suitable advertised.
The programme in hindsight
What is your annual salary band, if you would like to tell us?Dropdown
Optional, ending in prefer not to say, and reported only as a cohort range.
Which skills from the programme do you actually use?Multiple choice
Include a none of them yet option, which is a finding rather than a failure.
The programme prepared me for the work I am doingRating gridRequired
Row one of a five point agreement grid, rated by someone now doing the job.
What I learned matched what employers asked aboutRating gridRequired
Row two.
The qualification helped me get an interviewRating gridRequired
Row three. Signalling value, separate from what was learned.
The careers or placement support was usefulRating gridRequired
Row four. Include it only if such a service exists.
Would you recommend the programme to someone in your position a year ago?Single choiceRequired
Yes, probably, probably not, no. The headline verdict.
Staying in touch
What should the programme have covered that it did not?Long text
One thing needed since finishing. It is the curriculum review in a single field.
Would you talk to current students about your experience?Single choice
Yes, maybe, no. The cheapest recruiting asset a provider has.
Which questions to make required
Six things are required. The programme and cohort are required because a graduate result that cannot be compared with the intake before it says nothing. The main activity question is required because it is the outcome the whole survey exists to record. Every hindsight grid row is required so the average holds. The recommendation question is required because it is the verdict. The salary band is optional, offers prefer not to say, and is reported only as a cohort range.
- Which programme did you complete?
- Which cohort or intake were you in?
- What best describes your main activity now?
- The programme prepared me for the work I am doing
- What I learned matched what employers asked about
- The qualification helped me get an interview
- The careers or placement support was useful
- Would you recommend the programme to someone in your position a year ago?
The form built from these questions
A static copy of a form built from part of the bank, exactly as it renders.
How to change this for a different kind of programme
A university degree. Six months is early for a three year degree, so run the same instrument again at three years and keep every grid row identical between the two. Add questions about further study, professional registration and whether the graduate needed an additional qualification to enter the field, since for many degrees the first destination is another course rather than a job. A short vocational course. The relevant window is three months rather than six, and the question about whether the person was already working in the field becomes central, because many vocational students are upskilling in place. Replace the salary band with a question about whether the qualification changed their pay, hours or duties, which is more answerable and more honest. An apprenticeship or traineeship. Employment is guaranteed during the programme, so the interesting question is what happened after it. Ask whether the person stayed with the host employer, what they are paid relative to the award, and whether they would do the same apprenticeship again. Add one question about the quality of on the job supervision, which is the part of an apprenticeship no provider sees and every completion rate depends on.
Questions people ask
Why six months rather than three?
Three months catches people still searching and makes a programme look worse than it is, while a year loses too many contact details and too much attribution. Six months is the compromise the national graduate surveys settled on, and holding to it keeps your cohorts comparable with published benchmarks.
Should salary be asked at all?
Only as an optional band, only with a prefer not to say option, and only if you will report it as a cohort range. An exact figure is intrusive, harder to collect and no more useful once you are reporting a median. Put it after the outcome questions, never before them.
How do you reach graduates six months later?
Collect a personal email address before they leave, send from a named person rather than a system, and offer the cohort summary in return. Two reminders a week apart is the practical limit. Providers that leave contact collection until after graduation reliably lose a third of the cohort.
What response rate is realistic?
Thirty to forty five per cent is a good result for a six month survey with a personal contact address and a short instrument. Below twenty per cent, report the count alongside the percentage, because a favourable rate from a small and self selected group is worse than no number at all.
Should people who left early be surveyed?
Yes, and their answers are usually the most instructive. Ask the completion question early and branch: a non completer needs to be asked why they left and what would have kept them, not how well the programme prepared them for a job they may well have anyway.
Why ask whether they were already working in the field?
Because without it an employment rate is uninterpretable. A cohort of people upskilling in place will show excellent outcomes that the programme did nothing to produce. That one control question is the difference between a marketing number and a measurement.
What should be published?
A cohort summary with the activity split, the relatedness split and the recommendation result, with the response count stated plainly. Publishing it is also the thing that makes the next cohort answer, so send it to everyone who responded before it goes anywhere else.
Build this form in about a minute
The button opens the form generator with this form already described. Change the wording to match your own, generate, then edit any field.
Create a form with OneCraftOther question banks
Course evaluation questions for the end of term
An end of course evaluation has to separate what was taught from who taught it and from how it was assessed, because those three are fixed by three different people. These questions keep them in separate blocks and leave only two open answers.
Online learning survey questions about platform and pace
An online course fails in two quite different places, the platform and the pace, and a single satisfaction score cannot tell you which one happened. These questions separate them and then ask the completion question most surveys carefully avoid.
Workshop feedback questions across eight screens
A two hour workshop earns a two minute survey, and anything longer will be abandoned by the people whose opinion you most wanted. These questions cover whether the session matched its listing, how it was paced, what was useful and what to run next.
On writing the questions themselves, read How to write survey questions. For everything the builder can do, see the form maker. Step by step: Create a form with AI, then View, export and manage your responses.
Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .